Good day all Most of you may have heard the name Elon Musk over the years. He owns the Tesla electric car company, which produces expensive, mediocre, battery powered cars that rich, spoiled, politically correct moonbats like to buy.
Musk is also building this thing called a “Hyperloop” and owns SpaceX, which he plans to use to nuke Mars or something. However, there is a small problem with all of Musk’s plans. He isn’t spending his own money or that of his investors on them. No, when Obama was in office, Musk sank his snout deeply into the tax money trough. Now, people are beginning to wonder why the taxpayers are supporting him. Here’s a Commentary from The Hill:
Tesla’s new Model 3 has finally arrived, and not a moment too soon. The critics seem to love it, and Tesla management says it’s already received deposits for 500,000 of the vehicles. Perhaps now Elon Musk can finally get his hand out of U.S. taxpayers’ wallets?
Musk is, to be sure, an ideas man. Private, commercial space travel? Check. Washington to New York in less than half an hour in what he calls a “hyperloop” train that will travel at 800 miles per hour? Check. A new kind of tunneling engineering? Check. Solar energy? Check. Electric cars? Check, check.
Well, no one said that Musk didn’t have any ideas. Paying for them? Yeah, not really, no.
As wide-ranging as these various entrepreneurial ventures may be, they all have one thing in common – not a single one of them would get funding in a competitive private capital market if it weren’t for massive (and I do mean massive) taxpayer-funded government subsidies.
A study published two years ago by The Los Angeles Times revealed that just three of Musk’s ventures – SolarCity Corp. (which manufactured and installed solar energy systems before its 2016 merger with Tesla Motors Inc.), Tesla Motors Inc. (which manufactures electric vehicles), and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX (which builds rocket ships) – had received $4.9 billion in government subsidies to that point in time.
So I’ve sent this weasel $5 billion dollars of my hard earned money? Well, at the Moonbats buying his stuff are paying fair market value. Umm, not so much it seems.
But granting literally billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to Musk’s firms isn’t the worst of it. No, that honorific is reserved for this little gem: In order to induce car buyers to spend their money on electric vehicles, the federal government offers a $7,500 rebate on the purchase price.
But wait! There’s more!!
Some states enhance that rebate with rebates of their own. In California, for instance, purchasers of electric vehicles get a state-funded rebate of $2,500 more.
There’s a phrase for that – it’s called “crony capitalism.” And it stinks.
Crony capitalism relies on government picking winners and losers. It depends on government choosing to move resources to a favored enterprise, even as it refuses to move resources to disfavored enterprises.
We’ve had this problem, off and on since the founding of the country. It really took off under the Roosevelt Administration, (Franklin, not Teddy), and came to a head under Obama. Who can forget thos great picks like Solyndra? Well, the Proglodytes in Congress who pushed their subsidies would of course.
Here’s the question I hear when I’m talking to friends in Georgia who ask me to explain Washington to them: “Why should those guys in Washington take my hard-earned tax dollars and use them to lower the price of an electric car for some movie star in Hollywood?”
There are several reasons of course. First, you’re to stupid to be allowed to do anything for yourself, You must allow your betters to run your life for you. Second, only the over-educated elites in Washington D.C. know how businesses should be run. They have many years of classroom experience and tons to theory on how businesses should be run. Third, Hey! It’s Hollywood!!
I hope Elon Musk sells enough of those cars that he can make a profit on his own, without needing to dip any further into our pocketbooks and wallets. Maybe then we could actually get a tax cut, and get some of our money back, so we can make our own choices about how best to spend them, rather than letting bureaucrats and politicians in Washington make those decisions for us. President Trump, are you listening?
I’m sure he is, but the problem is the swamp dwellers in all the agencies. Musk has his hooks into all of them and he’s raking in the cash. The Democrats would love nothing more then to shovel even more money into Musk’s checking account. He, no doubt, will reciprocate with massive campaign donations, primarily to the Democrats, but I don’t doubt he’ll send a few bills to any in the GOP(e) who will help him. Hopefully, President Trump will see this commentary and look into pulling the plug on Musk.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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